Six years ago, when I was a reporter at New Times LA, ''I’d written several stories about Scientology (Los Angeles is one of its headquarters), and I was about to uncork the longest one yet—a 7,000 word piece about an embarrassing, $8 million defeat Scientology had just suffered, when the weekly paper suddenly folded. That unpublished story has been sitting in storage ever since. Fast forward to 2008, and the world of reporting on Scientology has changed radically, thanks in part ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 — The Government said today that it had agreed to grant a tax exemption to the Church of Scientology and more than 150 of its related corporations, ending one of the longest-running tax disputes in American history. "This puts an end to what has been an historic war," said Marty Rathbun, president of a Scientology organization that received a tax exemption. "It's like the Palestinians and the Israelis shaking hands." Officials at the Internal Revenue Service and the ...

Green Valley: Under the proposal, 250 students would board at the campus. A county spokesman says approval of a permit would be based on land-use issues. The Church of Scientology is seeking permission from Los Angeles County to open a boarding school for 250 students on the site of a former juvenile detention camp near Green Valley. The proposal has worried some of the 1,200 residents in the rural community, who voiced concerns about it at a public meeting Monday night. ...

[This is a reprint of an article published on Dec. 22, 1988 in the St. Petersburg Times.]

Seattle lawyer Walter D. Palmer says it was strictly "a business decision." But a result of an investment he made with business associate John G. Ritchie could result in a forced sale of Church of Scientology buildings in downtown Clearwater. And holding the auction for the men would be the Pinellas County government. Scientology lawyer Paul B. Johnson said he will seek an injunction to stop the sale. The proposed auction, which Palmer suggested two weeks ago, relates to Scientology's annual ...

After years of sparring with the townsfolk and veiling itself in secrecy, the Church of Scientology has succeeded in turning Clearwater into its spiritual mecca. Scientologists quietly run teen nightclubs, schools, day-care centers, management consulting firms and other businesses, records and interviews show. Now the strategy of the organization, longtime observers say, is to confront controversy, gain converts and make money - lots of it. Scientology's Clearwater operation brings in $1.5-million to $2-million a week, say church watchers who include Clearwater ...

The year was 1976, one year after the Church of Scientology had secretly moved its spiritual headquarters to Clearwater, and Mayor Gabe Cazares was complaining too loudly for the church's comfort. So, as documents seized by the FBI would later show, the church's Clearwater office devised a scheme to "ruin Mayor Gabriel Cazares' political career by spreading scandal about his sex life." Church officials came up with ways to get Cazares' school records, birth records, anything — from checking with the ...

"Corrupt, sinister and dangerous" were the words used to describe the Church of Scientology in a judgment given by Mr Justice Latey this summer. He also referred to it as "immoral and socially obnoxious". But who controls the Church now? A major Sunday Times Magazine investigation into the activities of the cult in America and Britain has uncovered a disturbing and extraordinary story — the takeover of the organisation by a small band of youthful fanatics following the disappearance of the ...

Three years ago, somewhere near this dusty little town of watermelon fields and senior citizen trailer parks, a pudgy, prolific science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard climbed into a black van and reportedly disappeared from sight. Nobody in Hemet, 80 miles east of Los Angeles, or anywhere else might have cared about the fate of a 71-year-old eccentric with a lust for privacy, except that Hubbard was the founder of one of the word's wealthiest and most controversial new religions. ...