[Picture / Caption: Nov. 7: Ailing meth cops sweat it out at an Orem, Utah, clinic.] A controversial Church of Scientology treatment used on World Trade Center emergency responders is being used in Utah to "detoxify" cops who raided methamphetamine labs in the 1980s and 1990s. The Utah Meth Cops Project is treating around a dozen former and current police officers at taxpayers' expense, using a regime devised by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard at a Bio-Cleansing Centers of America facility ...

Meth cops swear they can sweat off toxics Utah officers undergo treatment at taxpayers expense; experts leery Salt Lake Tribune/November 8, 2007 By Nate Carlisle and Lisa Rosetta Orem – The first time Kelly Call stood beside a methamphetamine lab, he felt a burning in his lungs and eyes. He was exposed to dozens of labs over the years and has had short-term memory loss, shortness of breath and trouble sleeping. But he recently began to feel better, and he credits ...

[Picture / Caption: CRAIG DILGER/Daily Herald Kelly Call (L) and Al Acosta (R) joke together while sitting in the sauna for detoxification. Both men were repeatedly exposed to the toxic chemicals used in meth-amphetamine labs while working for the Department of Public Safety. Acosta says that he has noticed a marked improvement in his health and his moods in the 22 days that he has been in the program. "If my humor is coming back thats a good thing," says Acosta. ...

Critics aside, they say Scientology's detox center cures ills. By Art Carey Inquirer Staff Writer Within days of beginning treatment, Mike Wire noticed changes. His pain eased. His mood brightened. His sense of smell returned, sharper than ever. A retired millwright from Bucks County, Wire, 60, is among thousands of rescue workers, firefighters and police officers who developed an array of serious ailments after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Wire spent 21/2 ...

On 9/11, Bobby Morrill got a call from his cousin Bobby Stewart, project manager for a construction company, inviting him to come to Manhattan to help clean up the mess. Morrill, who lives in Newark, was there the next day. He worked for 36 hours nonstop, directing fellow ironworkers as they began untangling the mound of twisted steel beams and girders. That first night, Morrill slept under a table in Battery Park. He wound up spending 10 weeks at Ground Zero, ...

Picture: "Lisa Gengo exercises before going into the dry sauna on the 23d day of her program. The exercise speeds niacin into circulation. Gengo had worked near Ground Zero."] Among medical professionals calling for further research into what's going on at the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, Lisa Gengo is unique. Since July, Gengo has been visiting the clinic once a week and she plans to go through the detox program herself. "I'm using myself as a guinea pig," she ...

Because she lived only a block from Ground Zero, Jodi Bettis wasn't allowed to return to her apartment until the end of October, about six weeks after 9/11. On her window ledge, she found six inches of dust and soot, embedded with grim souvenirs of people who had worked in the Twin Towers - an earring, the scrap of a photograph, popcorn. Her apartment assaulted her with a variety of smells - all of them repellent. "It smelled like heavy dust," ...

[Picture / Caption: Joe O'Sullivan, 42, of Queens, and his wife Helena, 33, talk with Jim Woodworth (right), the detox project's president, during a consultation. Joe O'Sullivan's has had health problems since 9/11. The framed towel had been used by patient Tom Bulger.] It's become something of a medical mystery: This detox program shouldn't work, but it seems to. Nobody - from convention doctors to the patients - can explain why, but those suffering severe symptoms after exposure to debris kicked ...

[Picture: "Tom Bulger on the roof of Stuyvesant High School in New York. To the left of his shoulder is the rebuilt 7 World Trade Center building (the tallest glass building in the background). Bulger was the first person through the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, a Manhattan clinic that follows a protocol pioneered by L. Ron Hubbard, controversial (and late) founder of the Church of Scientology."] Tom Bulger heard the sound of a jet flying low, gunning its engines. ...

The optometrist wants to hear about my most painful memories. This is an auditing session, an important component of a religion called Scientology. The optometrist is the auditor. His name is Steve Sasala. He is skinny. And tall. His face is long and narrow. I can make out the shape of his skull. We sit across from each other, on opposite sides of a tiny desk inside a claustrophobic room at the back of some historic building in Parma Heights. The ...

Hollywood, Tel Aviv is right behind you: Artists, businesspeople and middle-class seekers are filling the classrooms of local Scientology centers, hoping to rid themselves of excess spiritual baggage. Opera singer Gaby Sade used to have a very short fuse. If someone cut him off, he was capable of getting out of the car and giving the offending driver more than a piece of his mind. If if did not come to blows, he would at least tell him, in choice language, ...

A Queens legislator — who insists a controversial detoxification program he's promoting in lower Manhattan isn't a front for Scientology — attended a celebrity-studded Los Angeles gala sponsored by the Church of Scientology. City Councilman Hiram Monserrate said he paid his own way Saturday to the glitzy Hollywood event celebrating the 38th anniversary of the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center. Monserrate said the trip had no connection to his work on behalf of the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project on ...

Moscow: A Russian court has ordered a center operated by the Scientology movement in St. Petersburg to be shut down, city prosecutors said Thursday, after accusing the organization of unlicensed teaching and other activities. The St. Petersburg City Court ordered the Scientology center closed after it agreed with prosecutors who said the center's operations were violating its charter. "The center was engaging in 'auditing' and 'purification' activities," prosecutors said in a statement. "Such practices were advertised by the organization as healthcare ...

SHOCK and grief turned to horror when Joe Higgins helped pull the body of his brother and fellow firefighter, Tim, from the rubble of the World Trade Center. "We found him about three weeks after Sept. 11, and later, there was a bunch of us on the pile one night and I looked up," Joe was saying. "I saw this haze of dust was like a rainbow - red, blue, yellow tiny particles - and I said to the guys, 'You ...

In response to this, Religious Freedom Watch (RFW), universally regarded as a front group for the Church of Scientology, has posted a rundown (pun intended) of the supposed crimes against journalism that I committed in the writing of my piece on the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Program. "Methinks you doth protest too much DeSio. Or do you find Touretzky’s racist comments so normal, and your defense of his bigoted statements so necessary to support your own deep hatred, ...

Religious Freedom Watch (RFW) has just put up an item on its website charging that in my New York Detox piece Scientology critic Dave Touretzky (left) could not defend himself from charges that he is a racist, but simply stated that the charges are untrue because they cannot be found via a Lexis-Nexis search. The RFW item can be found here. RFW is almost universally regarded as a front group for the Church of Scientology and devotes a considerable amount of ...

Here's a little source material for you all regarding my piece on the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project. In it, I mention a particularly strongly worded letter sent by Queens City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. to Rev. John Carmichael, president of the New York branch of the Church of Scientology. The letter was sent to Carmichael in response to Vallone's strong words about Scientology, which can be found here and here. Carmichael requested a meeting with Vallone, but that ain't ...

Apparently, I’m a hate-filled bigot. That would have to be the conclusion you would draw if you follow the dealings of the Church of Scientology, particularly the organization known as Religious Freedom Watch (RFW), which is almost universally recognized as a Scientology front group. In response to last week’s cover story on the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, the controversial alternative health clinic based on the writings of Scientology founder, L. Ron Hubbard, RFW has bared its teeth. Evidently lacking ...

“I'm not here converting these men and women to Scientology. And I've got to tell you something—I've been a Scientologist 20 years. In Sacramento I, more than any other Scientologist, got new people into Scientology, me personally. I'm very good at converting people, if I want to.” Jim Woodworth is the director of the New York Rescue Workers' Detoxification Project, and he is bristling at the suggestion that his program is an arm of the Church of Scientology. He insists that ...

As Chad Bloom can attest from firsthand experience, the Narconon rehab program can bring ‘ice’ addicts back to live a productive, drug-free life Lari Zelinsky-Bloom is proud of her recent graduate. No ceremony or lei hail his achievement, but thanks to celebrities Kelly Preston and John Travolta, there will be many others to follow in the footsteps of her son, 21-year-old Chad Bloom. Chad just graduated from Narconon, a drug rehabilitation center. After a harrowing nightmare suffering the effects of ice ...

When 9/11 firefighter Joe Montaperto won a free bicycle at the start of last year's Five Boro Bike Tour, he vowed he'd improve his breathing problems in time to ride it in this year's event — and on Sunday, he'll make good on his promise. "I want to finish it in one piece and not need EMS to pick me up," quipped the rugged former Marine and semiprofessional football player. "The other day, I rode 14 miles just to see where ...

Two City Council members who attended Tom Cruise's fund-raiser for a controversial 9/11 "detoxification project" didn't pay the $6,250-a-ticket entry fee, but officials said they acted within the ethics rules. City Council members Joe Addabbo (D-Queens) and Hiram Monserrate (D-Queens) both turned up at the glitzy Manhattan affair Thursday night for the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, co-founded by Cruise and linked to Scientology. Addabbo is chairman of the council's Civil Service and Labor Committee. Emergency responders who underwent the ...

Tom Cruise rolled into Manhattan under extraordinary security last night for a Hollywood-style fund-raiser to benefit his controversial project to help 9/11 responders. The diminutive Scientologist, accompanied by his wife, Katie Holmes, pressed the flesh with supporters inside a $6,250-a-ticket benefit in Chelsea. Reporters were barred from the West 18th Street fund-raiser, which resembled a Hollywood premiere, with scores of security men and paparazzi. "He said how grateful he was to everyone for supporting the project," said Pat Bahnken, a party ...

NEW YORK (CBS) — Some call it a cult concoction while silver screen celebrity Tom Cruise swears by it – a Scientology program called the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project. City Councilman Hiram Monserrate said the program worked for him. "The fact is that this is a program that has helped over 700 rescue workers," Monserrate said. "A program that I have personally visited, participated in and spoken to dozens of rescue workers that today feel better. "Shame on anyone ...

Movie star Tom Cruise has won the support of hundreds of emergency workers in New York, after he hosted a $6,250-a-ticket benefit in the city Thursday night to raise funds for his controversial Sept. 11 detoxification program. The New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, which was co-founded by Cruise, is based on principals developed by Scientology leader L. Ron Hubbard. The free treatment involves large doses of vitamins, dietary adjustments and stints in a sauna. Among attendees at the high-profile event ...

LAST night another religious wack job came to attack Ground Zero: Tom bin Cruise. The warden of the Katie Holmes Correctional Facility zoomed in to do a "benefit" for his Scientology group, the "New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project." Only Cruise would hold a benefit for himself. Ground Zero crews are in for the Brooke Shields treatment: Cruise believes all ills are curable via the same Cartoon Network regimen of feeding people cooking oil and making them sweat. Cruise thinks he's ...

[Picture]Tom Cruise and his wife Katie Holmes arrive at the Altman Building for his Detox Center Benefit. [Picture]Michael Pena and his girlfriend, Breen Schaefer, were among the attendees at the Detox Center Benefit. Superstar actor and Scientology pusher Tom Cruise headlined a Chelsea soiree with all the excitement of a movie premiere last night to raise money for his controversial effort to "detox" Ground Zero workers. "It is an injustice that after six years people who were down there are still ...

Yesterday, I caught up with Councilman Hiram Monserrate, who has come under fire for supporting a Sept. 11 first-responder detoxification program associated with the Church of Scientology. Scientology's most famous booster, Tom Cruise, held a fund-raiser last night for the program. Monserrate, a former cop, told me he spoke with Sept. 11 rescue workers who have benefited from the program, and said that critics are motivated by their own agendas. "The bottom line is the program provided a better quality of ...