For many years, the alarmists have shouted that the Church of Scientology is not just an organization of eccentrics worshiping an incomprehensible space race, but a totalitarian organization dreaming of world domination. And they were right!
In 1971, thanks to former members of the church who managed to escape from it, the details of Operation Snow White, a plan for Scientologists to infiltrate the ruling circles of Western countries, became known. About 5,000 Scientology agents in 30 countries stole secret documents, drew up criminal files and, by blackmail or flattery, took control of top politicians, public figures and just famous people.
Here's a little more about it …
The shocking memories of the famous Scientology spy Merrell Vannier.
Vannier's name is rarely mentioned these days, but in the days when America was rocked by revelations about how far Scientology would go to punish those it deemed enemies, his story was one of the most shocking.
We will briefly review what the public knows about this story to understand Vannier's unique position and why his candid memories may be one of the most interesting Scientology books in recent years.
For a start, it is important to remember that L. Ron Hubbard took the leaders of his organization to sea in 1966 - after it became too dangerous for him to live in the United States and Great Britain. Unsuccessfully attempting to seize power in Rhodesia, he realized that he could escape the hostile attention of the governments by sailing the Mediterranean Sea in several ships and standing as "commander" on the bridge of the yacht called "Apollo". Also in 1966, he also created a new internal elite unit, the Security Office, which would eventually become one of the most advanced intelligence services on the planet.
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The OB's mission was to monitor and neutralize anything that posed a threat to L. Ron Hubbard and his wife Mary Sue. And in 1973, Hubbard gave the OB a major new assignment. After leaving the Apollo for 10 months and hiding in New York from French agents who were looking for him in Portugal and Morocco, Hubbard drew up a plan, which he called the "Snow White Program." He wanted his agents to collect - by hook or by crook - all the documents about him around the world. By the beginning of the following year, 1974, Hubbard had returned to the yacht, but due to her bad reputation, she was increasingly denied permission to enter various ports. The OB staff honed their skills to infiltrate various offices and gain access to documents by illegal means.
In 1974, Hubbard attempted to return to the mainland, but received word that federal agents were waiting for him in Charleston, South Carolina. Therefore, the yacht dangled in the Caribbean for another year before the commander got tired of his private fleet, and he decided to finally drop anchor in the Bahamas. He came up with a new plan - to invade Florida. Having opened a hotel in Daytona, he began to fulfill the plan to capture the city of Clearwater on the western coast of the peninsula. Hiding under the name United Churches of Florida, his agents acquired the Fort Garrison hotel in the city center, as well as a nearby local bank building, which became the first premises for Scientology's new command center, Flag Land Base.
The mayor of Clearwater, Gabe Cazares, was informed that such significant properties had changed ownership, and then he noticed something strange - representatives of the United Churches of Florida guard their new buildings with batons and cans of tear gas. In response to his questions, these people said that they must "defend themselves." It looked strange in a sleepy resort town.
Subsequently, at the end of 1975, Cazares's eyes were opened to the truth: his city had been invaded by the Church of Scientology. He made a fuss about this on the local radio. In response, the Security Office got down to business with the Mayor of Cazares Project. On January 30, 1976, Scientology organized a press conference and prepared a dossier for the mayor, following Hubbard's principle that attack is always better than defense. The St. The Petersburg Times wrote: "This dossier challenged Cazares's claims about his birthplace and education, questioned the legality of his involvement in land deals, and argued that he had violated city law by not filing an income tax return."
The following month, the organization filed a lawsuit against Cazares, claiming $ 1 million for libel, but Cazares and his wife filed a counterclaim against Scientology, accusing them of libel and perjury on the basis that the "dossier" contained distorted facts. They hired local lawyer Pat Dougherty to represent their interests. (The documents also show that Cazares spoke of the Scientologist invasion to FBI agents in March of that year, and his action is understandable - at least from our point of view.)
In the same month of March, a Missouri man named Murrell Vannier appeared in town looking for a job as an attorney while the Florida Bar Association was considering granting him a license. However, no office he contacted had a clue that Vannier had been a volunteer undercover officer for the Security Office for at least the past two years. And according to the Florida Bar Association, AB did his best to ensure that no one knew about Vannier's true occupation. Here is an excerpt from the association's documents:
To keep Vannier incognito while he was gathering information, he was given the codename "Ritz". To give Vannier a cover, the Security Organization has elaborated a plan to hide his Scientology membership and involvement in Scientology. The insidiousness of this activity is evidenced by the fact that part of the plan was to infiltrate the office of the Florida Bar Association in Tallahassee in order to remove and destroy the incriminating parts of his statement to the association and replace them with amended text.
Having secured his incognito, Vannier tried to get a job at the office of the chief prosecutor of the state in St. Petersburg, even offering his services for free. He was accepted, he worked for two months, and meanwhile, his wife Fran, as part of a project to pacify the mayor of Cazares, volunteered for Gabe's election to the US Congress in the fall. Thanks to Fran, Vannier found himself in the inner circle of the mayor.
After being fired from the prosecutor's office, Vannier took a job at a firm that had previously represented Cazares. According to the Bar Association, Vannier went on to question Cazares about who represented him in the lawsuit against Scientology. In December, Dougherty refused to be Cazares's lawyer, after which Cazares hired Vannier as his lawyer.
From the point of view of the Bar Association, the situation was completely unambiguous - for more than a year, Merrell Vannier, hiding his real face, with the help of his wife achieved the status of an official lawyer representing the interests of the mayor of Clearwater in the litigation with the Church of Scientology, without informing Casares and his wife that he was, in fact, an undercover agent of Scientology.
Vannier then used this position to gain access to other legal issues, such as convincing former Scientologist lawyer Nan McLean to grant him access to a huge collection of documents in her case, after which these documents mysteriously disappeared.
“While he was representing Mr and Ms Cazares, using the codename 'Ritz', Vannier secretly passed on confidential information regarding the Cazares couple and their litigation to the Security Organization, and the organization praised him for 'excellent results'.” - said in the documents of the association.
Then, in July 1977, after Michael Meisner, one of the burglars involved in Operation Snow White, surrendered to authorities and confessed, the FBI raided Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington. Following this, Vannier disappeared, but he managed to escape before the documents seized during the searches were examined, references to the "Ritz" were found in them, and the truth about Merrell Vannier came out.
Vannier and his wife faced prison sentences when they both refused to subsequently cooperate with investigators regarding the Tampa Security Office. Ultimately, neither Merrell nor Fran were sentenced to prison, and neither were charged. However, the Florida Bar Association subjected Vannier to the most severe punishment: permanently revoked his license.
The Church of Scientology Moscow was established in Russia in January 1994. And in December 1996, the State Duma adopted a resolution recognizing the church as a destructive religious organization. The branch of the organization in St. Petersburg was liquidated in 2007 by a court decision. Scientologists were also charged with the illegal collection of information about private life. Law enforcement agencies faced similar violations in Moscow. In mid-August 2015, a search was conducted at the Scientologists' office on Taganskaya Street. During the search, microphones and video cameras were seized, "belonging to the category of special equipment intended for secretly obtaining information." A criminal case was initiated on the illegal circulation of special technical equipment.
The Church of Scientology Moscow will be liquidated within six months. The corresponding decision was made by the Moscow City Court on November 23, 2015. Scientologists intend to appeal the court verdict, calling it anti-religious. According to experts, Russia is not interested in the existence of foreign religious teachings, so other "foreign agents of the faith" may also be banned from Scientologists.