A Spy in the Ointment

The connection between the CIA and Scientology has been reported by such organizations as the Federation of American Scientists, yet it has barely been reported in the press.

Funny how they avoid this topic of discussion.

Why would “America’s Premier Intelligence Agency” be interested in a “cult”?

The answer is somewhat obvious here.

Yet it goes even further back.

Russell Miller makes note of this in his biography of L Ron Hubbard entitled Barefaced Messiah:

“The same month as the Freedom Congress,(July 1956) the Central Intelligence Agency opened a file, No. 156409, on L. Ron Hubbard and his organization. CIA agents trawled through police, revenue, credit and property records to try and unravel Hubbard’s tangled corporate affairs. It was a task of herculean difficulty, for the Church of Scientology was a cryptic maze of ad hoc corporations. The printed notepaper of the Academy of Scientology gave only a hint of its labyrinthine structure – on the left-hand side of the page was a list of no less than seventeen associated organizations, ranging from the American Society for Disaster Relief to the Society of Consulting Ministers.
“Agents traced a considerable amount of property owned either by Hubbard, his wife, son, or one of the daunting number of ‘churches’ with which they were associated, but the report quickly became bogged down in a tangle of names and addresses: ‘The Academy of Religious Arts and Sciences is currently engaged as a school for ministers of religion which at the present time possesses approximately thirty to forty students. The entire course consists of $1500 to $1800 worth of actual classroom studies . . . The public office is located at 1810-12 19th Street N.W. The corporations rent the entire building . . .
“‘The Hubbard Guidance Center, located at 2315 15th Street, N.W., occupies the entire building which consists of three floors and which was purchased by the SUBJECT Organization. The center also rents farm property located somewhere along Colesville Road in Silver Spring, Maryland, on a short-term lease. The center formerly operated a branch office at 8609 Flower Avenue, Silver Spring, Maryland. In addition to the Silver Spring operation, the center has a working agreement with the Founding Church of Scientology of New York, which holds classes at Studio 847, Carnegie Hall, 154 West 57th Street, New York City. Churches of this denomination number in excess of one hundred in the United States . . .’
“One agent was assigned the thankless task of reading through all Hubbard’s published work at the Library of Congress in order to gain an ‘insight’ into Scientology. ‘Hubbard’s works’, he noted glumly, ‘contain many words, the meaning of which are not made clear for lay comprehension and perhaps purposely so.'”

Of course Miller doesn’t ask the obvious question:

Why would the Central Intelligence Agency supposedly a foreign intelligence service be “investigating” an American Citizen in violation of its charter and US law?